Yankee Opponents Say Water Permit Could Force Plant To Close

A
loss last week in federal appeals court has limited the state's options to
challenge Vermont Yankee's operating license.

Plant
opponents are now pinning their hopes on a permit that Yankee needs to release
hot water into the Connecticut
River.

Entergy
Vermont Yankee uses the Connecticut
River to cool its reactor,
and it needs a discharge permit from the state to release warm water back into
the stream.

For
years, the plant's been operating with an expired permit. The Connecticut River
Watershed Council says the old permit doesn't protect the river from thermal
pollution. David Deen is the council's river steward. He says the permit allows
Yankee to raise the river's temperature by 5 degrees overall, and by lesser
amounts during warmer months.

"This
is not good for the aquatic organisms that call the Connecticut River home," he says.

Deen
says Entergy has told the state that the hot water from Yankee only affects the
river locally, near Vernon. Yet he says the council's own experts reviewed the data
and found the thermal plume went 20 miles downstream

"And
it's raising the temperature of the river all the way down to Turner's Falls.
And that's by Entergy's own science," he says. "Why the Agency of Natural
Resources accepted their claim that it only affects the Vernon Pool has never
made sense to us."

The
state has been reviewing Yankee's request for a new permit for years. And the
delay is frustrating for Deen and other environmentalists. Pat Parenteau, a
professor at Vermont Law School, has represented the Watershed Council in the past.
He says the state should not let Yankee release any hot water into the river.

"The state's been dinking around for six years
now. Six years since the permit expired," he says. "They're way beyond any
reasonable time frame to make a decision. All they've got to do is say, ‘No
more discharge. That's it.'"

But
state officials say it's not that simple. Justin Johnson is deputy commissioner
of environmental conservation. He says requiring Entergy to use closed cycle
cooling - meaning it has to run its fans and cooling towers all year - would be
expensive for the company and has to be justified under the law.

With
the lengthy history of litigation between the state and Entergy, Johnson says
regulators want to get it right.

"We would
like to make a decision as soon as possible," he says. "But obviously (we) want
to make a decision that's legally defensible. It doesn't really help us to make
a decision that may get overturned in the future."

And Johnson
says the state is also waiting for the federal Environmental Protection Agency
to issue new rules that cover thermal discharges.

An Entergy spokesman said Yankee's discharge permit
has been upheld by the state Environmental Court and the state Supreme Court. The spokesman said the
company opposes using the cooling towers on a year-round basis.